Communal experimentalism

Many respected anarchist thinkers of the past, for example, Kropotkin and
Reclus were appalled by their comrades/contemporaies attempt to create an
anarchist or new society through the creation of small and isolated
communist/communal experiments. An unfortunate practice with a long history
and which shares characteristics or has parallels with monasticism,
religious fanaticism/isolationism, colonialism and early communist
experiments, rather than with modern anarchism as developed by workers
during the first worker's international. Except those communal experiments
based upon religious or authoritarian principles such ventures have never
succeeded in lasting very long. The attempt to create economic
self-sufficient 'utopian' communes in the wilderness, usually under
difficult financial circumstances, by a very small number of people, mostly
unacquaninted with agricultural/horticultural work, never succeeded in the
19th century--and the re-emergence of this infantile idea during the
'flower-power' era was a major reason for the failure of anarchism during
its partial resurgence during the 1960's and 1970's (partial in that it was
largely associated with pre-industrial/neo-primitivist perspectives
propunded by university/hippy dropouts rather than workers and industrial
issues). The reasons why such communist/commuanlist experiments fail are
many and various, not least of which is that people get sick and tired of
one another rather quickly. The fact that village life was never that easy
nor economically viable, at least since the industrial revolution, makes
the attempt to construct a new village founded upon untried and utopian
principles from scratch virtual stupidity. More pertinently such
self-indulgent activity has absolutely no relation to the economics of the
real world and no impact upon the masses what so ever, and hence has no
propaganda value. Besides it is not necessary to communalise everything,
act as one big family and all eat around the same table. Housing
co-operatives, community land trusts etc., can provide affordable housing
and joint access to communal facilities without needing to foolishly
attempt to create a communist utopia amongst a group of strangers bound
only by an commitment to a usually ill-defined and probably unrealisable
ideal. These issues are explored intelligently, and in some detail in a
recently published pamphlet (available from the ASN) by Kropotkin, entitled
Small Communal Experiments and Why They Fail.

Collectives and Support/propaganda Groups

As a noun a collective describes any social group whatsoever. As a
political concept it is so indicise as to be practically worthless for the
purpose of describing or analysing social phenomena. At the very least
however we can say that a collective is a group or association rather that
an individual or the state. However, this can describe anything from a
large company to a group of children building a cubby house. Actually the
most fruitful approach to the concept of collectivity is to point out that
it is derived from the Latin _to pick_, thus collectivism denotes a
state where people can pick or choose who they work with, and the way in
which they work together. This is a very common form of organisation, a
perfect example of a collective might be a group of people who happen to
meet each other down the pub one Saturday night and get-it-together to play
beach volley ball every Sunday thereafter. The point being that the way in
which the group functions and comes together is a matter of choice rather
than being imposed upon them. The word collective in anarchist thought
specifically refers to an economic arrangement that lies between capitalism
and anarchist communism. For example, the anarcho-communist idea of 'the
big pile system' where people just take what they need from the common
stock is perhaps too utopian to achieve right away. Thus, alternatively, it
might be better to try this out with stuff that is plentiful whilst having
some sort of formalised exchange system for less common items. The latter
position was described as a collectivist or more realistic/practical
programe rather than a communist position. Anarchists in the Spanish civil
war used the term to describe a wide variety of economic experiments in
villages and in factories/industries in Barcelona. The resurgence of
interest in anarchism in the 1960's led to the word being misapplied by
misguided hippies to describe what had previously been described as a
'propaganda group', sometimes, and sometimes not, centred around a
prominent writer or activist, for example, the _Freedom Group_, the
_Friends of Durruti Group_ or the _Miners Support Group_ Propaganda groups
are many and various. The most common activities are running a
bookshop/cafe/drop-in Centre, printing pamphlets, producing newspapers,
running lecture series. A propaganda group is not an economic group upon
which people gain their livelihood, but a voluntary, usually loss-making
activity participated in during the members spare time (which people seem
to have very little of these days). Anarchist propaganda groups, unlike
most other political groupings have the added disadvantage of not having a
party structure (and unfortunately these days attract people who eshew
political and intellectual leadership). The point is though, that a
propaganda group is not a collective, as it has no economic basis. A
propaganda group is a group set up to persuade the general public to
collectivise their communities and industries, it is not itself a
collective. There are of course many collectives (outside the specifically
historical anarchist use of the word) that do not have an economic basis,
our group of beach volley ballers for example. Collective behaviour is
very, very common, but only economic collectivism has any real political
significance. To label a propaganda group a collective or the attempt to
collectivise a loose assemblage of people undertaking propaganda activities
upon a sporadic, and at best part-time basis, which provide them no
economic reward, is at worst silly, and at best, hopelessly utopian and
bound to fail. Obviously, what is needed is a party structure, not a
propaganda group attempting the mega-utopian project of creating a
communist utopia within the shell of their own propaganda group, in the
absence of any economic link with the real world. However, in the absence
of a party structure some organisation is required. As anarchism is still
very much at the propaganda stage of its development, merely an idea-olgy
rather than real-ity it is best to be rather modest in ones organisational
aspirations. A group of 5 or 10 people (such as our volley ball group) can
work very effectively with one another--without ever having a formal
meeting--and simply relying upon a trusted network of people who respect
each others areas of expertise and pool their efforts together with the
minimum of fuss. Our miners support group during the British Miners Strike,
the jura media project or the recent conferences staged in co-operation
with jura media and Bob Gould are all examples, within my own experience,
where something was collectively (in the broad non-economic sense) achieved
without giving ourselves the fancy title 'collective' nor pretending that
we could ever become some such thing. On the other hand, those propaganda
groups who aspire to create their own communist utopia in the shell of
their own propaganda group are alway racked by argument, dissension and
open violence., and when their members fail to live up to communist-utopian
ideals (upon which in the real world there is rarely any agreement in any
case) they crash in smouldering compost of mutual criticism. Also in a
small voluntary, non-economic organisation, people can always come and go
as they please and have varying amounts of time (and they are usually
economically better off by not participating), inevitably the effort by
some or one or two is always greater than the rest and meetings are either
poorly attended, boring or unnecessary for such small groupings.

Alternatively they tend to be dominated by utopian fanatics every ready to
grumble about other's collective deficiencies. Moreover, propaganda groups
never grow beyond a small size--there is no economic or party glue--to hold
them together. The constant complaint by such groups that "we never seem to
grow" is based upon the mistaken premise that small propaganda groups can
ever grow beyond a certain size and whether it is desirable that they do so
in any case. The purpose of a propaganda group is that it seeks to promote
the growth of anarchist economic collectives in the real world and beyond a
certain, quite small number of people, the growth of its own organisation
is irrelevant. Propaganda groups should be judged by their effectiveness in
producing propaganda, and more relevantly creating anarchist
structures/awareness in the real economic world. The notion that individual
propaganda groups can grow beyond a few people is silly, though of course a
federation of them is another matter again, as this is the growth of a
propaganda movement, the proliferation of propaganda groups (Federations
have their own orgnisational problems which I'm not going into right now.
Also the relationship of the propaganda group to a real collectived
syndicate or commune, also creates problems when it becomes an intellectual
vanguard or second force. The discussion surrounding the FAI/CNT
relationship in Spanish revolution is instructive in this respect). Beyond
this the type of activities open to small propaganda groups such as
bookshops, newspapers etc., are typically not particularly suitable
projects for the instantaneous creation of communist ideals. In the real
world small newspapers typically require an editorial role, writers,
printers, cartoonists, layout designers, money, dogsbody work, the resident
computer wizz, time, a marketer, distributor, photographers etc.,--these
skills and resources are not evenly distributed or interchangeable in the
real world, and usually less so in the world of the propagation of
revolutionary ideals. Moreover, the need for editorial supervision and the
sectarian nature of newsprint mean that it is most unfavourable activity
around which to develop an egalitarian collective.

In the real world small bookshops (becoming very rare now) are usually run
as a small business by individual proprietors with a knowledge and talent
for the book business. A book business is not run by ideologies but by
taking informed risks and building up solid relationships with one's
suppliers and buyers. This is achieved through consistency, efficiency,
judgement and economic necessity. A group of people who are not
economically dependant upon the business, involving themselves
inconsistently and haphazardly, and who often have little or no knowledge
of the book business (or any business for that matter) is very far from a
good start. Unfortunately those concerned with running such ventures fail
to realise that running a small book business is not an exercise in
creating a collective utopia but in adequate returns and selling books.
Even when such bookshops do succeed (for a while) the participants delude
themselves that running a small book business slightly more democratically
than usual is some sort of really amazing goal in itself, which it is not.
Co-operatives, book clubs, mutualist associations or LETS can achieve this,
without having any real political agenda/affiliations at all. But because
people's income is dependant upon the success of the venture (ie., it is a
real economic entity not a propaganda group) there is more likelihood that
the correct solutions will be found--rather than spending ones time arguing
about how things fall short of some ill-defined notion of
collectivity--eventually leading to dissension, discord and economic
failure. Beyond this the less politically charged or a-political nature of
economic co-operatives also means that they are less susceptible to the
silly ideological squabbles that beset most anarchist bookshops. Anarchist
cafes, usually with a smaller and less intimidating range of anarchist
propaganda, suffer from all of the above deficiencies but have the added
problem that the general public treat it as a coffee shop, and treat those
who serve on them very badly on occasions, leading those who work on them
to get pissed of. It is one thing getting treated like shit when your
earning some money its quite another when you're not. Anarchists have also
attempted to get their propaganda across by involving themselves in so
called 'community issues'. These issues are usually catered for by a host
of other community groups and deflects effort away from all important
agitation (from the point of view of any genuine revolutionary effort) in
the industrial and economic sectors of society. Although the propaganda
group (be it a bookshop, newspaper or show) is a vital element of any
revolutionary strategy--anarchists are well advised not to mistakenly place
their hopes that a propaganda group can be, of itself, anything more than
it is, and that to do so, is at best self-indulgent navel-gazing and at
worst a sad and destructive delusion. The major strategy of genuine
revolutionaries in Australia has been the attempt to create industrial
support groups, which is another type of propaganda activity involving the
publication of industry specific newspapers and the giving of practical aid
during industrial disputes. The main problem with this activity is that
just when one has a 1 or 2 militant workers they tend to be sacked, minor
battles are often won but this is mitigated by the constant loss of
politicised workers. However there are occasions when propaganda of this
kind can have more widespread results. The magazine Sparks and the
propaganda/support group surrounding it, undoubtedly encouraged the
development of anarchist and syndicalist thinking and activity amongst
Melbourne tram workers in the 1990 dispute and lockout. (See
Anarcho-Syndicalism in Practice: The Melbourne Tram Dispute and Lockout
January-February 1990 available from the ASN) The fact that this
industrial movement was ultimately unsuccessful does not detract from the
fact that focused and consistent propaganda by a small group of committed
activists can penetrate economically and politically important industrial
sectors leading to the attempt of the workers to take control, and perhaps,
ultimately achieve the collectivisation of their industries, by which time
the workers will be doing it for themselves and the propaganda/support
group will have long since disappeared. The left has a tendency to talk in
terms of a propaganda group or party 'having' 'controling' etc., this or
that union--leading to intellectual vanguardism external to workers own
organisation. It is important to realise that a propaganda group is a means
to an end and not an end in itself and the failure to appreciate this
results in the re-emergence of partyism and governmentalism (or the
propaganda group or intellectual leadership becomes a party or government
in waiting) A development which is fatal to the development of an anarchist
society.